Sword-Singer Read online

  “Yes. To be my sponsor.”

  I frowned. “What for?”

  “I must face my accusers and be judged. If I have a sponsor, someone who speaks on my behalf, it might help. And someone of the Sandtiger’s stature—”

  “Save it, Del. Empty flattery isn’t your style, and up here I doubt they even know my name.” I winced. “Why am I so stiff?”

  “Because you were very nearly frozen,” she snapped impatiently. “It was a storm I called, and a bad one. A banshee-storm…Tiger—will you come?”

  “Right now I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Tiger—”

  I sighed. “Yes. Yes. I’ll come. If it makes you happy. Hoolies, I haven’t anything better to do.”

  “I need you, Tiger.”

  She was oddly intent. I glared. “I just said I’d come. Did you freeze your ears in addition to me?”

  “There are—things you will have to do.”

  The latter portion of her sentence came out very fast, as if she were afraid I might undeclare myself if she said them plainly. But at the moment all I wanted to do was sleep, not debate where I was going, who with, and why.

  Still, something nagged at me. And I’d learned to pay attention to that kind of nagging, particularly when Del was involved. “Bascha—”

  “If I take no one with me, no one to speak for me, they will not favor my explanation,” she said quietly, face averted. “I killed an honored and honorable man, a man well-loved by every student and teacher, regardless of status. I deserve to be executed…but I would prefer to live.” She drew in a harsh breath through a constricted throat, no longer avoiding my gaze. “Am I wrong to want that, Tiger? Wrong to ask your help?”

  She never had before. By that alone, I knew how serious it was.

  “I’ll go,” I agreed. “I’ll do whatever they want me to do. But not yet. Not now. Not today. In the morning.” I yawned. “All right, bascha?”

  She touched my forehead and stroked back a lock of dark hair. “Sulhaya, Sandtiger. You are a worthy swordmate.”

  I grunted. “But not a worthy bedmate. At least—not while there are loki lurking.”

  Del sighed. “It’s only a week, Tiger. Can’t you wait that long?”

  “A week here, a week there…pretty soon you’re celibate and I’m frustrated.” I cracked one lid. “Think it can’t happen? Just think back on that journey across the Punja, while hunting for Jamail.”

  “I hired a guide, not a bedmate.”

  “And promised the bedding in order to get me in the circle,” I retorted, “after your bout with sandsickness. I remember, Del, even if you don’t…or say you don’t. Typical woman, bascha—promising whatever you have to in order to make a man dance to your tune.”

  “And you danced quite nicely, as I recall—” there was laughter in her tone “—in the circle.”

  I opened both eyes. “What about now?” I asked. “Am I dancing again if I go with you? Are you singing a song for me in addition to your sword?”

  Color spilled out of her face. And then flowed back again, angrily. “I do what I have to do,” she snapped, “and so, by the gods, do you.”

  I shut my eyes again. “Already, I think I regret this.”

  Del got up and strode away. “Regret whatever you like.”

  But she came back to put a folded blanket under my head and spread the other one over my body.

  Women: they tend you or terrorize you.

  Ten

  “Tiger,” she said, “it’s time to go.”

  Maybe so, but I wasn’t ready to. I stayed right where I was.

  Del turned back a flap of blanket. “We have to go,” she told me solemnly. “They’re all starting to thaw.”

  I frowned beneath the blanket. “Who’s starting—oh.” I flipped back the blanket, sat up, glowered out at the afternoon. Purposely, I did not look at the borjuni remains.

  “If you’re hungry, we can eat on the way,” Del said. “I don’t want to stay here any longer.”

  Something in her voice got my attention fast. Del had killed before, and often, and undoubtedly would kill again. She had learned to deal with it, as a sword-dancer must, taking no joy, no satisfaction, no abnormal pleasure in the death. She was matter-of-fact and wholly professional, keeping private what she felt, yet now she sounded odd. Odd and strangely shaken.

  I looked at my competent swordmate and saw she was afraid.

  “Del.” I pushed up onto knees and toes. “Bascha, what is it?”

  She rose even as I moved, stepping away from me. The set of her shoulders was different, sort of sucked in, rolled forward, as if she were feeling intensely vulnerable. Del is not incapable of normal emotions—I have seen her frightened, angry, pleased, and wholly exhilarated—but generally she locks away the deepest feelings, for fear of sharing too much. She carries a shield, does Del, and employs it even with me.

  Now the shield was down. Del was clearly spooked.

  She moved away again as I rose to stand. Boreal was in one hand. “We have to go,” she said.

  “Hoolies, Del, what’s wrong?”

  “This place!” she cried suddenly, and the echoes reverberated. “It was here…it was here—”

  She was incapable of continuing. But even as I moved to touch her, Del turned away, turning her back on me. She walked away across the turf, bypassing frozen borjuni, and stopped on the other side of the tiny valley. Hugging the sword, she stopped, and fell down upon her knees.

  “Here—” she said, “—it was here—”

  I could hardly hear her. Slowly I approached, not wanting to disturb her, yet knowing it might be for the best. Del had lost control.

  Back and forth, she rocked, hugging the naked blade. She pressed the hilt against her mouth, winding fingers around the crosspieces. She clutched Boreal to her, as if the sword could offer comfort.

  Well, it had before. While exacting a terrible retribution.

  “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know it—I didn’t recognize it. I went to relieve myself, and then I knew it again.” She sucked in an unsteady breath. “How could I not have known?”

  I glanced around the flattened cleft between the foothills. Ocher-gold and lavender, sunlight glittering off swordborn frost and dampness. Such a pretty little valley, with such an ugly history. “Easy enough to forget, I think, considering what happened.”

  “What happened,” she echoed faintly. “Do you know what happened?”

  I did not, specifically. Del had never told me.

  “So many of them,” she said, “all aswirl in Southron silks…shouting and yelling and laughing…daring us to defy them—” She wavered, clutched the blade more tightly; breath hissed against the hilt. “We would have given them welcome, not knowing what they intended. But they took it, they took it and reviled us for our courtesy, not caring whom they killed, or how.” Her eyes were tightly shut. “The infants they killed outright, not wishing to deal with them…the men they hacked to pieces…the women they kept for themselves and used them until they died. Those of us who were left—those of us not too young or too old—they intended for the slaveblock.”

  “Del.”

  “There were only two of us left…Jamail and myself. The others were all dead.”

  “Del.”

  “He was male, and so they watched him. But I was female, and I was Ajani’s. His concern, once he had made me so.” Her eyes were open again, staring at nothingness. “But Ajani grew careless…and so I was able to flee. To leave my brother behind.”

  “Bascha—”

  “I left him!” she cried. “And you saw what he became—what he was made to be!”

  It was not a shout of fear or pain, but of rage and realization. An angry, throttled shout that rose to a wailing cry of blind self-hatred. She was beyond herself, was Del; she had stepped outside herself.

  And I had an idea why.

  I reached down, caught her shoulders, dragged her up from the ground. I ignored the bla
de in her hands, even as it fell to thud on bumpy, hummocky turf. I caught her and I held her and I made her look at me. “Don’t ever blame yourself!”

  “I left him—”

  “—because you had to. Because there was no choice. Because you intended to help him escape as well, once you could find a way.”

  “They took him South—”

  “—and they sold him, as they intended to do with you.” I wanted to shake her; all I did was grip her arms. “You have done more to yourself in the name of kinship and duty than anyone I know. But it ends, Del—it has to! You can’t gut yourself with it forever. Haven’t you suffered enough?”

  Her voice was toneless. “Not as much as Jamail.”

  “He is what he is!” I hissed. “Mute. Castrated. No more the boy you knew. But he never can be, Del…he never will be, now—and you have to realize it.”

  “He was ten—”

  “—and you were fifteen. You lost as much as he did, if in a different way.” I sucked in an uneven breath. “Oh, bascha, bascha, do you think I don’t know? I sleep with you, remember? I know your dreams are troubled.”

  She was shaking in my hands. “I want him,” she said, “I want Ajani.”

  “I know. I know, Del. But you’ve already made your decision.”

  “Have I?” Her tone was bitter.

  “Well, you certainly gave a good imitation of it earlier—asking me to sponsor you and speak for you and do whatever else I have to do to convince them you should live.” I let her go. “If you’d rather go after Ajani—”

  “It isn’t fair, Tiger!”

  “Tell me something new.” I reached down, retrieved Boreal—I could do that, now—and handed her to Del. “You’d better decide now, bascha. If we’re going after Ajani, our best bet is to head back to Harquhal and see if we can scare up anyone who knows where he is. Obviously, he may soon know where we are; he seems to have loyal men.”

  “And dead ones,” she said flatly.

  “And how many does that leave?”

  Del shrugged. “Ten. Fifteen. There were twenty or so. I couldn’t count them all…I wasn’t conscious all of the time.” She shrugged again, more violently, as if to ward off additional recollections. “I have killed five, but that is not enough. Not till I have Ajani.”

  “Your decision, Del.”

  She looked at me in raw appeal. “What would you do, Tiger?”

  “Your decision, bascha.”

  “But don’t you have an opinion? You always have an opinion.”

  “I have one, yes. I know better than to state it.” I smiled crookedly. “If I told you what I’d do, and you decided to do it, too, you might decide later that it wasn’t a good idea. And then I’d get the blame for suggesting it in the first place.”

  She opened her mouth to disagree, reconsidered, shut it. Glumly, she nodded.

  “You can go after him now,” I said quietly. “You can track him, catch him, kill him. It’s what you want to do. But it might take more than two months—by then you would be fair game as well…as much as Ajani is.”

  Del stared at her sword.

  “Or you can go home and face your accusers, accept whatever punishment they levy—and then go after Ajani.”

  “If they let me live.”

  “If they let both of us live.” I smiled as she looked at me in shock. “You got me this far, Del. I’ll see it through.”

  “But if they sentence me to death, as is their right—”

  “Right schmight,” I retorted. “If they’re stupid enough to try it, they’ll have to fight both of us.”

  Del continued to stare. And then she smiled a little, laughed a little, nodded. “Wouldn’t that be a tale to tell.”

  “No doubt Bellin would enjoy it.” I turned to head back toward the blankets. “Let’s go, bascha. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us no matter which way we go.”

  The sunlight beat down upon us, sucking us dry of fluids. My lungs were empty of breath, stripped by heat of moisture, so that I rasped and rattled as I walked. Scorched within and without, I knew only that if we did not find a cistern soon, we would die, as the Hanjii intended us to die, the violent tribe that had left us in the Punja. No horses, no water, only weapons, because we were a sacrifice to the Sun. A hungry deity.

  “Tiger?”

  The flesh peeled back from Del’s bones, exposing muscle and viscera. Gone was the Northern bascha, banished by Southron sun. And now, it was my turn.

  “Tiger.”

  I flinched away from her touch. It hurt too much. Her flesh would debride my own.

  “Tiger—stop.”

  I stopped. Blinked. Stared. And recalled we were North, not South…there was no desert here.

  It was a soft day and softer afternoon, full of misting rain and bits of fog, damp enough to drown me. The road was muddy because of it, and the turf exceedingly slippery. No matter which way I went, I found myself laboring.

  And cursing the missing stud, absent three days now.

  I’ll admit it, I’m fond of the fellow. We’d been together seven years…and over those years had come to a companionable, armed truce. He was tough, strong, resilient—as well as mean-tempered and sly. But we’d learned one another’s habits and got along tolerably well, especially in tough situations.

  And now I was without him.

  Men say horses are stupid. I say they’ve just figured out a way of making men believe the lie so their kind can get the upper hand when a body climbs into the saddle.

  Or tries to climb into the saddle.

  “Tiger,” she said, “are you all right?”

  “Rest,” I mumbled and dropped my bundle down. I bent over, bracing hands on knees, and tried to clear my chest. My head felt full of cloth. My eyes were dry and gritty, then teared as I blinked.

  “Water?” she asked quietly, reaching for the bota slung diagonally across her chest.

  I shook my head. Coughed. Wished my headache would go away. Coughed again; my chest was tight and painful.

  Del frowned. “Are you lightheaded? Sometimes it takes people that way when they first begin to climb.”

  “Not lightheaded. Rock-headed…” I sneezed, and wished I hadn’t. “Hoolies, I feel terrible.”

  The frown deepened. “Why do you feel wrong-headed?”

  “Not ‘wrong’—rock,” I reached up to tap my head with a sore knuckle. “My head feels like a rock.”

  She sighed, brow furrowed in concern. “I think you have caught cold.”

  Caught cold. A moment before, lost in memories of the South, I’d been scorched by heat.

  I stood upright, trying to clear my lungs. Something wailed deep in my chest every time I drew in a breath or moved. “What exactly is that?”

  Del blinked. “A cold?” She paused. “Don’t you know?”

  “Some sort of disease?”

  “Not—disease.” Clearly, she was taken aback by my ignorance, which didn’t please me much. “Sickness, yes…have you never heard of it?”

  With infinite patience, I asked, “How can a man ‘catch cold’ when he lives in a blazing desert?”

  She shrugged. “People do. North, South—it doesn’t matter. Have you never been sick before?” Del paused. “Sick sick, not hung over from too much aqivi. That I’ve seen myself.”

  I scowled, shook my head. “Wound fever a few times. Nothing else.” I sniffed and felt it reverberate inside my skull. “Did catching cold—or whatever—have anything to do with that sword? With that storm?” I frowned. “It was cold as hoolies in the middle of that mess…did you make me get sick?” Balefully, I glared. “Is this your fault, bascha?”

  She raised a defiant chin. “If you had put on the leathers like I told you, and the furs—”

  I shook my head. “Too much weight.”

  “Then when you freeze your gehetties off, don’t complain to me.” Crossly, she gestured toward my bundle on the ground. “Come on, then…we’re wasting time.”

  I looked back the way we
had come, toward the way we would go. “Where are we, bascha? I’ve lost track.”

  “Still on the Traders’ Road. We have a long way to go.” She paused. “You’ve slowed us down.”

  “Sorry.” But I wasn’t. I coughed and peered through cloying mist. “Does it ever get dry here?”

  “Midwinter rains,” she answered. “It will get worse, not better, at least until we reach the uplands. Then we’ll be in snow.”

  I shivered as a breath of wind caressed my flesh. Silk was plastered against my body. “Hoolies, bascha—I wish you were a Southroner.”

  “I don’t.” Emphatically. “I’m not about to give up my freedom.”

  I sighed. “I only meant then we could be doing this where it’s warm.”

  Del’s mouth twisted wryly. “We’ll go a little farther, Tiger. There is bound to be a roadhouse soon. We can eat there, and change into dry clothing—warmer clothing—and wait until morning to go on.”

  I bent and pulled my bundle from the ground. “I hate rain.” I said it with profound clarity, just to make sure she knew.

  Apparently, she did. She turned her back and began to climb.

  We did not find a roadhouse. We found a worsening rainstorm, which beat me down into a large lump of sodden silk and misery. I plodded through mud, slipped on wet turf, wheezed, coughed, sniffed and labored my way up one hill and down another, knowing better than to complain and give Del fodder. I fixed my attention on taking one step after another, and managed to accomplish it.

  Right into the tip of a sword.

  I realized, dimly, that Del had been shouting at me to stop. I hadn’t heard her. Or else her noise had joined the racket in my chest, merging sniffs and coughs and rumbles one into the other, until all I’d heard was my own wheezes, ignoring everything else. Including whatever warning might have been given.

  It didn’t please me at all. But I was too tired to care.

  I peered down at the sword tip. It rested against my wet, silk-swathed belly. And it trembled, the sword, because the hands that held it were too small, too scared, lacking skill.

  He was, I thought, maybe ten.

  “Stop,” he said fiercely.

  “Yes,” I agreed, “I have.”

  “Don’t move.” A new voice. Female. Young. Equally fierce and adamant.